Employment Low, Optimism High

Henry County Turns To Education And Ads

July 10, 1998|By MICHAEL JANOFSKY N.Y. Times News Service

MARTINSVILLE — By all accounts, Jermelle Penn and Carolyn Hopkins have almost nothing in common. Jermelle is 9-year-old third-grader at Irisburg Elementary School. Hopkins is a 40-year-old machine technician at the DuPont nylon plant.

Although they have never met, they are linked through profound changes now under way throughout southern Virginia's Henry County, where economic reliance on furniture-making and textiles is steadily giving way to uncertainty.

Like countless other regions around the country, Henry County, an area south of Roanoke near the North Carolina border, is moving toward the future by fits and starts. Factory closings here as a result of corporate mergers and cost-cutting measures have become common for nearly a decade, putting hundreds of people out of work. The DuPont plant, which opened in 1941 and once employed as many as 5,000 workers, is the latest, with a planned shutdown at the end of the month. But in a way, that was the last straw.

Rather than watch another manufacturing site turn hollow, this one costing almost 450 jobs and as much as $1.4 million a year in taxes, county officials have embarked on an ambitious program to shape the future for Jermelle, Hopkins and thousands of others in the region.

And much of the effort depends on a candy bar.

With an eye toward the rapidly growing technology centers of northern Virginia, where companies cannot find enough skilled employees to fill jobs, Henry County won permission of Nestle Co. to use a likeness of its Oh Henry! chocolate bar in a promotional campaign that sings the praises of the county.

In recent advertisements in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and in promotional mailings, a picture of an Oh Henry! bar in its colorful wrapper is followed by the tagline, ``We're hungry for work.''

``We've known for about two years that DuPont was closing,'' said Benny Summerlin, deputy county administrator. ``We had to figure out a way to soften the blow, how to market the site.''

Henry County is more than hungry for work. It is famished. Nearly every economic indicator shows the county is lagging behind the state and the country as the local manufacturing base shrinks and the population slowly falls - to 56,001 in July 1997 from 57,654 in 1980. Perhaps more telling is the rise in median age - to 35.3 in 1990 from 30.6 in 1980 - a trend that suggests younger people are leaving to find work elsewhere, cutting into the regional tax base.

The county is also grappling with an embarrassingly low percentage of people with high school degrees: 53.9 percent, against about 75 percent for Virginia and the country.

``That means almost half our people aren't graduating high school,'' Summerlin said. ``Our goal is to reduce that to 20 percent.''

Since starting the Oh Henry! promotion, an $85,000 campaign financed by the county, the city of Martinsville and DuPont, county officials say they have received a small number of telephone inquiries from companies curious about the county.

But attracting new employers is only part of the strategy. The rest involves efforts to prepare county residents by teaching them skills that new companies might require.

For schoolchildren like Jermelle, that meant a decision by the county to spend $362,000 a year to give every child in the fourth and eighth grade, starting in September, a laptop computer to keep through high school.

It also meant helping people like Hopkins, a DuPont employee for the last 19 years, by working with Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville to create a curriculum that will help match graduates to the local job market. In addition, the county is allocating $280,000 a year to expand adult education classes in the public schools.

``Everybody liked to talk about problems, but nobody was doing anything,'' said Joanne Whitley, dean of academic and student development at the community college. ``We finally decided, there's been enough talk. Let's have some action.''

While it remains too early to gauge the success, if any, of the county's efforts, optimism abounds. In a visit to Irisburg Elementary School, J. David Martin, the division superintendent of public schools, showed Jermelle one of the new laptops that fourth-graders will get in the fall.

Martin dropped it on the floor to demonstrate its durability. Jermelle looked aghast for an instant, then smiled to discover it was unharmed.

``Made out of the same material they make motorcycle helmets,'' Martin said.

``Cool,'' Jermelle exclaimed.

At the DuPont plant, Hopkins and two co-workers, Kay Handy, 43, and Phoebe Gravely, 51, talked about life after manufacturing.

``I have a positive outlook,'' Hopkins said as the others nodded. ``I'm looking at the closing as an opportunity for schooling and preparing myself for something in the medical field. I'm hopeful, but if something doesn't happen, Martinsville is going to go down to nothing. Something needs to be done to bring some good jobs into the area.''